Hello, this is going to be lengthy . Please bear with me.
I hail from a middle class family. My father had a dream , a dream of owning a tea garden. He worked hard for his entire life with honesty and dignity. And few years back he fulfilled his dream and invested all his savings to purchase a tea garden in Rajgunj , near Siliguri,West Bengal. But due to excessive extortion from the labourers and local neta , his health started deteriorating and he decided to sell the tea garden. But the situation was so bad that we had to agree to sell the property to the same politician , for lesser value of course.
The neta had given a token amount promising to pay the rest after 3 months.For the last 9 months he has been acting as the owner of my father's land and all the took all the income from that land. And even after 9 months he refused to pay any money. And meanwhile in the pretence of selling some part of the property to multiple labourers he took money from them , but was unable to give them registration as the land is still in my father's name. My parents went to local police for help. They suggested that since he is a neta , its better that we do some "mediation". Finally my brother (26 years old) had to quit his job and fight with him alone .Only by confronting him in front of almost 50 people , and these 50 people who were brought into our tea garden by the same neta as his associates. Somehow bhai managed to throw him out of our land as the news of this entire episode reached to some other big politicians.
The situation is such in that area that we are now forced to act on the promise that the neta had made to the local labourers. And my father agreed to sell the property for a lesser value to the labourers.On the day of registration some random person filed a complaint in the registration office saying some part of the land was owned by his father many years back and someone at sometime had illegally taken over the land. No paper work was submitted by him though. Because of which we weren't able to proceed with the registration.
Today the same person who claims to have been cheated many years back illegally entered our land and occupied some part of it. It is clearly evident that he has the support of the neta , but we can not prove it or take any action. Few lawyers told us that these people aren't educated enough to understand logic or to reason with. And they advised us to do "mediation" as well. My family has now no hope in our law enforcement , but I still do.
All of my father's and my savings have gone in past few years in saving this land. If you are reading this and have any suggestion / guidance , please do reply.
